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Donald Trump insists dead people 'voting' helped him lose popular vote against Hillary Clinton

He presented no evidence for his claims

Clark Mindock
New York
Wednesday 19 July 2017 11:39 EDT
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Trump implies 'large numbers' of dead people voted during election

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Donald Trump is still saying that the 2016 election was rigged against him.

During an address at his voter fraud commission, he insisted - without evidence - that votes cast in the name of dead people were responsible for his popular vote election loss to Hillary Clinton. Mr Trump, who fell short of Ms Clinton by nearly three million votes, won in the electoral college after wins in a few key states that were considered to be Democratic "firewall" states.

Mr Trump created the voter fraud commission in response to that popular vote embarrassment, and has steadily insisted that he should have won the popular vote but was snubbed as a result of fraudulent ballots.

"Every time voter fraud occurs, it cancels out the vote of a lawful citizen," Mr Trump said. "Any form of illegal or fraudulent voting, whether by non-citizens or the diseased, and any form of voter suppression or intimidation, must be stopped."

The commission's highest profile action thus far has been to request voter data from states, which many state officials have rejected. That request asked for information including the names of voters, their addresses, their political party registration, and the last four digits of their social security numbers. Most of that data is already made available by many states, and is frequently sold to political campaigns hoping to beef up their operations.

"If any state does not want to share this information one has to wonder what they're worried about," Mr Trump said. "I ask the vice president, I ask the commission what they're worried about? There's something. There always is."

Mr Trump's voter fraud commission has been criticised, with opponents saying that the commission may have violated federal law in asking for the voter data. Before the first meeting, Democrats penned a letter to Vice President Mike Pence to request that he remove Kris Kobach from the commission. Mr Kobach is the Kansas secretary of State, and has been sued several times by the American Civil Liberites Union, which has alleged that his policies pose restrictive and unconstitutional challenges for voters.

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